Halloween WWII Style

The other morning I woke up and looked out the window and saw pumpkins smashed and some decorations strewn. “Ah, good,” I said to my daughters, “someone has done their research on the history of Halloween!”They rolled their eyes and kept reading the comics over their bowls of cereal. After 13 years of fatherhood, I’d lost the ability to shock them…or they were hoping by their indifference to ward off the inevitable history lecture to follow. If so — it didn’t work.Foe much of our history, Halloween wasn’t about trick-or-treating or going around in costumes – it was about vandalism. Halloween celebrates the dark side, the side we reject and fear – all that we try to deny. Mischief making has historically been a part of that. If you look at newspapers 80 or 90 years ago…